


The Girl in the Refrigerated Truck

by Dandybear



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Canon Child Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/F, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 14:04:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6808000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dandybear/pseuds/Dandybear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re older and your tastes have matured. Hanna was a bright eyed ingenue. Sameen is-was-is a predator first and foremost. You’re the hiker wandering too close to the bear, hand feeding her sandwiches from your picnic. It’s no surprise, to have been pinned by the bear, seeing hard eyes and bared teeth, but when she put you between her jaws and bit down it was not to kill</p>
<p>Stream of Consciousness character study of what's going on it Root's head during M.I.A.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl in the Refrigerated Truck

**Author's Note:**

> Root's desperate rampage in MIA was utterly heartbreaking with the context of her backstory. She's a fun character to write because she's such a melodramatic nerd prone to spouting purple prose like some gay ass super villain. 
> 
> Shaw is more like Team Machine's trained bear than Bear is. And, I'm still not over the fact that she rode a bike to New Jersey in record time to save Root's skinny ass. This is the ship of dreams.
> 
> Unbeta'd.

Twelve. You were twelve years old watching Hanna play Oregon Trail again and again. The way her curls brushed her chin as she moved. The softness of her face. She was bright, brilliant, a girl going places. Not at all like Samantha Groves. Skinny, weird, and standoffish. Living a half-life watching and just plotting for the right moment to escape.

 

You watched her get into that animal’s car and never saw her again. You were toying with your identity even then. In Bishop, you were and would always be Samantha Groves. Outside, you could be anyone. The root of a tree, running deep, creating pathways, impossible to catch.

 

Your love has always been transformative. Hanna didn’t have a chance to grow up, so you became her. The brown curls feel more natural than straw-blonde hair ever did. The nose job helped you shed the last of your childhood skin. For the first time, you looked in the mirror and saw someone you could identify with. This, this is Root. 

 

Samantha Groves is a ghost, digging concrete and dirt out of Trent Russell’s back yard.

 

Samantha Groves haunts you and screams inside your chest because it’s happening again. The girl, the car, the time limit running out. It’s a white refrigerated truck this time, and once again, she’s hidden from view by small town monsters.

 

You’re older and your tastes have matured. Hanna was a bright eyed ingenue. Sameen is-was-is a predator first and foremost. You’re the hiker wandering too close to the bear, hand feeding her sandwiches from your picnic. It’s no surprise, to have been pinned by the bear, seeing hard eyes and bared teeth, but when she put you between her jaws and bit down it was not to kill.

 

The transformation loving Shaw brings...  that’s harder to place. It started as fun with you two. Finding that kindred spirit by complete accident. Sharing a hot look over a hotter iron with promises to bookmark that moment and return to it later. Later, as it turned out, was a CIA safe house where she tied you to a kitchen chair and brought a ‘Hallelujah’ to your lips. You returned the favour over the course of the ten hours you had to kill. 

 

She loves you like a favourite pair of jeans. Perfectly fitting, comfortable--a possession. She’s always quick to remind you that her brain chemistry lacks the ability to form attachments. That you shouldn’t read into the way she never kicks you out of her bed after sex. To ignore how gentle she is when dressing your wounds. That look of bared teeth and raised brows that oozes affection when you feed her.

 

Others might think you misguided, claiming to see love in the eyes of a creature whose only instinct is violence. 

 

Sameen proved them wrong by sacrificing herself for you, but all you can see are license plate numbers. A cage. The look on her face.

 

Loving The Machine made you a channel of God. And with that, you learned mercy. Violence, as it turns out, is not always the answer. It can be effective, but it is a tool to be used sparingly. You must be clever, you must outrun, outfox, and out maneuver everyone. But you can only do that if The Machine allows it.

 

This can’t be the last you see of her.

 

Your god is silent, sullen, evasive. And you? You’re tired of this ‘she works in mysterious ways’ bullshit that you’re always spouting. 

 

So, you’re possessed, willing to hack, torture, and kill your way to find Shaw. She will not be another Hanna. Trapped in that box for twenty years, alive-dead-alive. You can’t bear it. 

 

Reese, at least, is understanding. Desperate in his own way to find his murderous counterpart. Harold’s chirps for reason, for mercy fall on your deaf ear. 

 

You follow the trail of breadcrumbs to a place that reeks of small town rot and makes your temples pound with anxiety. Shaw must be here. A woman with dark hair. The adrenaline that’s been keeping you moving turns from cold to hot. She’s here. She’s alive. You’re opening the box.

 

Only to find a cat of a different kind.

 

The woman in the bed has brown hair and in your desperation you mistake pale skin for ashy olive. She turns to you and the flirtatious jab dies on your tongue. 

 

This woman doesn’t roll her eyes and ask what took you so long. She shirks away from the two wild eyed killers who broke into her prison calling her by a stranger’s name.

 

Just another victim of the stock exchange. Blood pounds in your working ear, the right side of your head is utterly silent.

 

The Machine stays silent as you shoot to kill every obstacle instead of incapacitate. You’re running on autopilot. Caught up in a memory. The week after Hanna disappeared your mother saw your silent drowning and did the only thing a woman from small town, Corpus Christi could think to do during a crisis. She took you to church. You had to change into your good high tops and everything. You remember staring up at the icon and thinking.

  
Fuck you, God. 


End file.
